Freezing in the air-conditioned offices of the Thai consulate in Bombay in Nariman Point, waiting for my visa.
We arrived from Gokarna on the overnight Matsyagandha Express, and made our way from Lokmanya Tilak station in northern Bombay to Colaba on an old black and yellow cab through the early morning traffic as the pale orange sun came over the horizon of grey broken down buildings and smog. Too many heart-breaking sights for such a short taxi ride. But such is life in Bombay, where more than half the population lives in slums, dreaming of becoming film stars. A city of dreams it is, and of hard-core reality, gnashing and snarling at each other within each man's heart. I am attracted and revolted with the same degree of intensity.
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I just put Ale and Babu in a cab to the airport. They're on their way to London whereas I am again a lonesome traveller, for a while. My heart is a lump of fat and muscle, heavy, weighed down by the splinters of the tiny heartbreak of short separations, and suddenly the streets seem so different, oddly lifeless, for a while. This angst will follow me a few days, I know, and the key will be to keep busy: inactivity is anguish's best friend, that and a large empty room at the Salvation Army Shelter.
The past couple of days were spent wandering about Bombay with Ale and Babu, seeing a few sights, hunting for used books in Flora Fountain, eating falooda with ice-cream and flying kites in Chowpatty beach, and just generally wondering at the beauty, the horror, and the complex mix of styles and peoples that is this city; and then in the evening eating dinner in some swanky restaurant and drinking beer in the upstairs bar at Leopold's for European prices. Bombay is unlike any other city in India, and reminds me of Hong Kong: a cosmopolitan Asian megalopolis on the sea. It is relatively clean and orderly and people, including women, tend to dress in western style. All this means, of course, that India is somehow lost in the exchange: no cows, no monkeys, no kurtas and few sarees, no cycle-rickshaws and no chai-wallahs on street corners. No mantras, pujas, sadhus, stray dogs and general sensory overdrive. For this we have to go to the slums, I'm sure. That is where Bombay contains India, forcing it down, preventing it from leaking out or tearing through the seams that the thread of material wealth has sewn.
Last night, as we were coming back from Leopold's, the night watchman at the Salvation Army introduced me to Amjad, a casting scout for one of the many Bollywood film companies, who offered me a one-day job as an extra in a soap-opera for Zee-TV, “Yahan main ghar ghar kheli” (“I'm here home home play”, was Amjad's unlikely translation), and so here I am, “keeping busy” as I intended, in some lousy studio in Film City, Bollywood. Keeping busy of course mainly means sitting around (in suits!), and waiting: nothing like a little filmmaking to take away the glam and the glitz from the whole movie business. So this morning, after my little family left, I went up to my room and took a shower, shaved, cut my hair shorter, and took off my three earrings (“You got to look like executive business man, yaar”, Amjad told me), then met up with him and my other extra-companions (three Austrians, one guy and two girls) at the door of the Salvation Army and begun our way north, first in a taxi to Churchgate Station, and from there on a crowded suburban train almost two hours away from central Bombay, passed Dadar, Bandra, Juhu Beach, Andheri and the other rich northern suburbs, and got off at Goregaon with its portuguese sounding name, from where we took a rickshaw to the actual studios. The city we travel across is like an octopus with endlessly receding tentacles and the glimpse we get from the sardine-can windows is that of the usual mix of modernity, faded colonial splendors, and grimy misery. My companions and I face the day with curiosity and a healthy sense of adventure, although knowing we are also in for hours of boredom. We are to be, believe it or not, wealthy western financers for a large construction project. My name is Mr. Frank, and all I say is “How do you do?”, as I shake hands with somebody. But of course that simple greeting catapults me to the heights of a “speaking part”, which makes me, officially although not salary-wise, no longer an extra.
As the day evolved into the night and we went from one take to another (the speed and carelessness of the Indian filmmaker while shooting is proverbial) I had a chance to meet some of the guys working at the shoot, and especially Ranjit, the young stuttering assistant director, who happened to be from Varanasi. All in all a group of nice happy people, in great contrast to the stress and anguish I remember from Mexican and Italian shoots. And this includes the actors, amongst which two gorgeously shiny Bollywood starlettes. The worst, most stressed and unfriendly were in the end Amjad and his assistant, the two “casting scouts” (touts, more like it). But hey, we got lunch, dinner, plenty of chai, a fresh 500 rupee note, and a taxi ride back to Colaba. Not a bad deal, really.
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